Today Giant Freakin' Robot released a video today titled How A 90s Sci-Fi Masterpiece Was Kneecapped By The Matrix and I immediately knew they were going to drag out Dark City because A) The plots of the movies have similarities, B) The Matrix came out just a year later, C) The Matrix shot on some of the same sets, and D) Because of A-C, a lot of people have lumped them together so they could comment on how The Matrix was so much more successful.

I remember when I saw Dark City very well. A friend and I were in Seattle for some kind of morning event and went over the night before. We wanted to kill time after dinner so we went to a theater nearby and just picked the most interesting movie. Which happened to be Dark City. We knew nothing about it and neither of us had even saw a trailer.

Needless to say, it was a mind-blowing experience.

This is one mind-blowing film.

So of course I had to watch it for the hundredth time tonight. Just as good as it ever was. That ending reveal they came up with is pretty epic.

And here's the video I was talking about...

I've heard more than a couple times over the decades that they were planning on a sequel or television series or something new to do with Dark City. The last time was back in 2021 when director Alex Proyas said a series was in development (and said he hopes that Kiefer Sutherland will return for it). Not sure where they can go with a sequel after what happened, but I'd absolutely tune in to find out!

Back when I was young, naive, and traveling the world, I spent my fair share of sleeping in stations, hostels, and on trains. It always seemed like such a waste to spend money on lodging because the more money I saved, the more I got to travel. Far better to spend my money on flights, transportation, museum fees, and food than "wasting" it on a hotel!

Then... as I entered my late 20's... I decided that globetrotting a little less so I could stay in a cheap hotel was a better way to travel. I got tired of having to carry a bike-lock to secure my backpack to my train seat or hostel bed so it wouldn't get stolen while I slept.

Then... somthing happened in my early-30's that changed everything. I started traveling regularly for work where I got to stay in nice hotels. Nothing crazy... not a room at the Ritz Carlton or anything... but nice hotels that were a big step up from the Motel 6 or Super 8 rooms I was used to.

It was very hard to stay at the Hilton for work then stay at an ultra-budget hotel for personal travel. And so I started adding vacation days to work trips so I could make my money go further and be able to afford nicer hotels. Have work in Germany? Add a cheap flight to Spain after my work is over! Far cheaper than flying to Spain on my own! Between work-work and charity-work, I was in Europe and Asia fairly often, so I got to see a lot of the world without having to foot the bill entirely by myself.

Thanks to the pandemic, my travel for work-work and charity-work abruptly came to a halt in January 2020 and never recovered. In the past five years I've taken exactly three trips requiring plane travel.

Next year I have two trips planned (so far), and that's what sent me down lodging memory lane.

But also got me to thinking...

If I were starting out traveling today, would I be sleeping in a bus station or checking into a hostel? Probably, I guess? I mean, people still do it (obviously), but it seems less safe than it was in the late 80's. Though I fully admit that this is likely more perceptual than anything else. My odds of getting assaulted in a bus station while sleeping may have been less back then, but it was never zero.

The issue that gives me pause on saying that now-a-days I would be staying in a hotel is the expense of it all.

Travel is so much more expensive than it used to be. And hotel rooms almost comically so.

If I were starting out with travel today on a starving post-college student budget, I wouldn't be able to afford to stay in a hotel. Heck, I can barely afford it now! I feel bad for young people in 2024... particularly young families... trying to afford a vacation. Just being able to afford a place to live, food to eat, and American "health" care takes all your money.

Today was not a very good day at all. A lot of crazy stuff mucking things up from the moment I turned on my computer at 5:50am until just a few moments ago when I was getting ready to feed the cats their dinner and wanted to turn the stairwell lights on for Jenny because she was still upstairs.

And here's how that went...

ME: "Hey Siri, turn on stair lights."
SIRI: Turns on lights.
SONOS: Plays Starlight by Muse.
JAKE: I'm hungry.
JENNY: Okay, I'm here. Scratch my ass.

Now, Siri actually turning on the lights is not fully expected, but also not surprising. Jake being hungry and Jenny wanting ass scratches are to be expected.

What was completely unexpected was Sonos playing Starlight.

Sonos never does the fuck what you want it to do when you ask it to do something directly and call it by name. Its voice assistant is shit (even if it has a great speaking voice). So why the heck did it pipe up with its bullshit when "Siri" sounds nothing like "Sonos?" Not even in the same ballpark.

But I did get to listen to a song by Muse, so there's that...

I am seriously beginning to wonder if a "smart" home isn't for me.

Last night I got into a bit of an online scuffle because somebody was saying that there are some subjects which comedians should never joke about. I responded that since everybody would have a separate list of things they feel should not be allowed, there would be no comedy left because everybody likely has different ideas about what needs to be on the list.

This is very different from saying that there are subjects which I don't find funny... because there definitely are. But most of the time it's not that I feel the subject itself should never be included in a joke, it's because I feel the joke was lazy. Very few things offend me, but lazy jokes very much do.

As an example... my mother had dementia. Something that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy because it's such a horrific condition. Understandably, "jokes" mocking or ridiculing people with dementia are not something I find the least bit funny. But do I think that dementia, as the topic of a joke, should be banned? Of course not. Because in the hands of a skilled comedian, it can be darn funny.

Jimmy Carr is a highly controversial comedian out of the UK. He's controversial because his jokes can include a frightening array of topics from pedophilia to sexual assault that are not funny at all. And while he has jokes that are lazy as fuck for punching down, he's also able to make good jokes out of things that are inherently not funny.

Like dementia.

A couple months ago I saw a clip of Jimmy doing some crowd work. Somebody asked him what it's like to be famous. Jimmy said "It's excellent! No complaints. I'll tell you what it's like being famous. It's like you live in a lovely little village... it's very friendly... but you've got Alzheimer's. Because everyone knows you, and you don't recognize any(body). I wander around all day and people go 'Alright, Jimmy!' and I go... uh... hello." — Half of what makes the joke work is how he tells it. But the best part is that he's not actually making fun of anybody with Alzheimer's. So it's funny without punching down, which is the best way to be funny.

Now, I'm not saying there are people who won't find the joke funny... heck, back when I was in the thick of trying to deal with it, I likely wouldn't have found it as funny as I do now... and that's okay. But to outright ban a comedian from a topic if they are able to construct something clever without being lazy? No thanks.

I found the video, by the way. His Alzheimer's joke is early on. Though if you are easily offended, then it's probably best to not watch anything Jimmy-Carr-related. You've been warned...

Jimmy's biggest talent is presenting British quiz shows, which he is very, very good at. He's at his best when he's bouncing off of other people, and a quiz show is perfect for that. YouTube has videos for 8 Out of 10 Cats and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Big Fat Quiz of the Year, all of which are probably less offensive material than his stand-up, if you're interested.

There's a lot that I could say about current events.

But I think that this TikTok from Pastor Paul Drees is the closest to how I am feeling about things, so it's probably best that I just go with it instead of trying to dance around what I'd like to say... what I should probably say... or something I might immediately regret if I say...

"Health care" in these United States is utterly fucking horrendous.

You've got an entire industry whose entire point is to take money out of the system. It serves absolutely no other purpose.

If all the money that the American people paid into "health" insurance only for insurance companies to FUCK THEM OVER was instead put into actual health care, we'd be paying less for far, far more.

I had to go nearly three fucking weeks without medication prescribed by my doctor because my "health" insurance company wouldn't fill it without "prior approval." And it's like... my doctor says that I require it. That's all the fucking approval you fucking need. But no. They had to deny the prescription. Then my doctor had to send in paperwork asking for approval. Then the insurance company had to process shit while I waited. Then I'm guessing the CEO of the insurance company had to fly to St. Barts on their private jet for a week to consider if, in fact, they would allow me to have what my doctor says I need. THEN they decided to allow the prescription to be filled.

Two days after my medication was finally in my hands, I got a letter telling me how "pleased" my "health" insurance company was to approve my prescription request.

For the love of God I don't understand how Americans have been continuously conned into thinking that this is the way health care should work. Forget one greedy fuck at a fucking insurance company... the entire country should be in goddamn flames over this bullshit.

And perhaps one day it will be.

The videos have been good again this week... because a Very Special all new, all video Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Infinitly Watchable! Looking for your next watch? Black Doves on Netflix. Two episodes in and I didn't want it to end. If you like crazy spy thrillers, this is the one...

Ben Wishaw is genius in everything. Sarah Lancashire is good in everything. And Keira Knightley... here she is a revelation. She doesn't often get roles like this, but she should. This is contender for my favorite shows of 2024. UPDATE: I should mention that if you are playing "The Little Drummer Boy Challenge," you will lose if you watch the beginning of Episode 04.

   
• New Skeletons! Star Wars doesn't have to be just one thing. They can tell lots of kinds of stories within that universe. So if you don't like the latest series, Skeleton Crew, fine. If you can't accept that they are making "Goonies in Space," fine. If it's not "Real Star Wars" without Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker to you, fine. But for the love of God... can people stop shitting all over those who ARE enjoying it for what it is? Hate away if that's what you want, but other opinions exist. And I'm happy to see that the tide is turning on Skeleton Crew now that more and more people have seen the debut episodes and loved them. This is a darn good show and really good Star Wars to boot...

Usually I hate shows with kids because they're written to be whiny, annoying, and unwatchable. This series is different. Great characters that just happen to be kids. Worth a look if you've got Disney+!

   
• All My Love! At 99, Dick Van Dyke is in amazingly good health. Just look at this...

He's also got more marbles rattling around in his head than I do. Incredible.

   
• Woodworking! I loathe ASMR videos (but you do you, if that's your jam). This wonderful demonstration of craftsmanship is what I consider to be the ultimate destress stimulation...

And that's not the end!

Wonderful. I wish I'd happen upon several million dollars so I can retire and do stuff like this all day long.

   
• SQUEEEEEEE! Michelle Yeoh is delicious in this role. I love the movie already.

Of course, she's delicious in every role, so there's that.

   
• Smarty-Bird! Holy shit. Meanwhile, humans are eating paste, thinking the world is flat, and becoming anti-vaxers...

I, for one, welcome our new crow overlords.

   
• Business Partners! Your Sunday dose of happy...

That there are still people who think this is any less valid a love story than any other is kinda sad.

   
Until next week's bullets then...

The cats have been extra crafty lately.

Like they're stalking each other. I think it started as an accident, but then things escallated and now they're hunting each other for fun.

Here's Jake looking down the stairwell as his sister comes back from running around downstairs...

But it's just play. They're not aggressive about it or anything. They still hang out being indifferent towards each other...

Meanwhile: It's a tale as old as time this morning...

JENNY: You should rub my belly.
ME: No. It's a trap.
JENNY: It's not a trap. Here's my belly... rub it.
ME: No.
JENNY: Look how fluffy it is tho.
ME: You just want an excuse to attack me.
JENNY: RUB IT! RUB MY BELLY!
ME: OKAY!!
=kicking and scratching ensues=
JENNY: HOW DARE YOU ATTEMPT TO RUB MY BELLY!
=five minutes later=
JENNY: Rub my belly.

The fact that Apple HomeKit can't seem to maintain connections... and has its automations fail for no reason all the time... is only half the reason I hate it so much. A major problem with HomeKit is that the automations are so ridiculously underpowered and limited. If you want to do anything more than the most basic of tasks, you're out of luck.

Homey Pro, on the other hand, is fairly robust. Their automations are called "flows." And you have your pick of how deep you want to go. Their standard flows are very reminiscent of HomeKit. Basically an IF THIS HAPPENS, THEN DO THAT situation. But if you want more than that, you can use Homey Advanced Flows.

Despite the fact that they are indeed more advanced, they are surprisingly easy to use because of the beautiful graphic interface that Homey has come up with. In many ways, I find it easier to use than the basic option...

Here I am building a routine that monitors the brightness of the living room. If it drops to certain level of darkness and it's before 9pm, the lights turn on. If it's after 10pm and there's nobody home to turn the lights off, they turn off automatically...

This isn't terribly complex, yet. I have the option of adding an ELSE to the conditionals. For example, if it's after 10pm and somebody actually is home, I can have an entirely different set of routines be initiated. So many possibilities, and I've not even scratched the surface.

Homey Pro may not rely on the cloud to do what it does (everything on the Pro is processed locally) but it's not entirely isolated. For example... if there's a water leak detected, not only will the Homey Pro light up and glow blue, but a text message will be sent to my iPhone and the Sonos speakers in my living room and bedroom will announce the leak...

One of the many features I'm interested in exploiting is global variables. You can have routines set variables in one place, then have them available to every flow you create, at which point they can be modified. This could end up being very handy in the future when I'm doing far more complex interactions between devices.

If there's one thing about all this that I'm certain of, home automation is addicting. And the seemingly limitless options provided by Homey Pro Advanced Flows are certainly going to suck up a lot of my time. The more I play around, the more I'll learn how to do things better. So I'm sure there'll be loads of tweaking from here on out.

And here's the thing... if "Advanced Flows" are still not capable enough for you, then you can turn to Homey Script, which allows programmable goodness...

I really hope that I never get to the point that I need this.

But anyway...

Despite divorcing myself from HomeKit, I'm still firmly entrenched in the Apple Ecosystem. I still want to use Siri as the trigger for manually starting automations that I build. Fortunately, Homey Pro has Siri Shortcuts integration, so I can just delete my HomeKit Automations, rewrite them as Homey Pro Flows that are named the same, then create a Siri Shortcut to run them. That way I don't have to remember any new naming scheme for what I've already learned. Easy.

And there you have it. After a decade I am done, done, DONE with shitty fucking HomeKit.

I hope.

Yes, I left all my devices in HomeKit just in case, because you never know, but for now I am happy that I finally have a way to move past all the limitations I've been trying to work within since I started with home automation all these years.

Any parting comments?

Yes. Thank God I didn't go 100% Aqara as I planned when Homey Pro fell through the first time. The Zigbee protocol that Aqara uses is utter shit. I bought some water leak sensors because they were the most economical leak sensors I could get (at a time when I was pouring money into water leak repairs). Pairing the sensors to the Aqara M2 Hub was not a big deal. But I could never pair the M2 Hub (via Matter) to Homey Pro because it said devices weren't attached. Which they were. So I had to pair the sensors directly to Homey Pro which was a horrific ordeal. For my first two units it took a minimum of six tries. The third took ELEVEN tries. The fourth took eight. The fifth? Still hasn't paired. This is utter madness. I don't know why the Aqara M2 Hub has no problem pairing with them but the Homey Pro is so utterly hopeless. I may end up replacing all the Aqara sensors with Matter versions if I can find affordable ones next Black Friday.

A full half of my smart devices are from Eve Home. Which meant once I got the routine figured out to get them brought into Homey, it was simple (if time consuming) to power through them all.

But the entire point of Homey (other than getting rid of HomeKit) was bringing the many other devices I have into my smart home. Some of which were never able to be used with HomeKit.

Fortunately, there are apps for that...

The only one I'm having issues with is Google Nest. I'd like to be able to use their motion detection, but haven't figured out how. I'll keep working on it because it's supposed to be possible.

All is not perfect though. There are some devices I own without apps available...

• BRILLIANT - This one really hurts. I paid a huge amount of money for pricey Brilliant light switches for my Dining Room and Living Room because Eve Home doesn't make a dimmer switch. Brilliant does a brilliant job of dimming if you have Hue lighting, because it will keep the switch live and let you control the Hue bulbs with the switch. The reason I was willing to pay so much money for these switches was because Brilliant promised that they would be updatable to current technologies. A Matter upgrade was promised for 2023. But then Brilliant put itself up for sale. Eventually they were bought, but no mention has been made about an upgrade for Matter. I can, of course, control the lights directly with Homey Pro thanks to the Hue plugin... but I really want to have the switch also be controllable. Hopefully it will happen one day.
• RHEEM - My hot water heater has an app where I can schedule the temperature so I'm not wasting energy heating my water to high temperatures when I'm at work. It would be cool if Rheem was controllable so that when I'm scheduled out of the house, it would never come back up to temperature before/after work.
• SENSE - My energy monitoring device has never worked like it should. It was supposed to figure out the "energy signature" of my various appliances so it could recognize them. It never has for everything. But for a couple of them it kinda has. I'd like to be able to work this on/off data into my smart home to make it more useful, but oh well.
• LITTER-ROBOT - It would be cool to automatically cycle the electrical plug when an error doesn't clear so I'm not obsessively checking to make sure that Jenny has a clean litter box while I'm gone. Because if there's not a clean place for her to do her duty, she might choose somewhere else to do it.
• GOSUND - These are smart electrical plugs I use to control the holiday lights that the HOA hangs up. They're on a timer, so no biggie. But it would have been nice to have them on my control board.
• SUNBEAM - Yes. For my electric blanket. And for no other reason than the Sunbeam app is 100% shit. Every. Fucking. Time. You. Turn. On. Your. Blanket. With. The. App. It. Will. Give. You. The. Same. Fucking. Warning. Telling. You. That. Any. Setting. Above. 5. Will. Drop. To. 5. After. One. Hour. If. You. Don't. Confirm. On. The. Controller. EVERY FUCKING TIME!!! This is fucking shitty on top of shitty and I will NEVER by another Sunbeam product because it's just so damn stupid. ESPECIALLY SINCE I NEVER SET IT ABOVE THE "LOW" SETTING! Why not only display the warning when somebody sets it above 5? Until my blanket stops working, I'd love to be able to control my 'lectrc blankie in a smarter way than this absurdly fucking stupid bullshit.

But anyway... all of the devices I own which can be brought into Homey are now in Homey.

Except one.

I was positive to make sure that the Nanoleaf light strip I bought for under my kitchen cabinets was Matter compatible. Except I cannot get it into anything except HomeKit for some reason. And I tried for over an hour to get it into Homey. This is incredibly frustrating. I don't know if Amazon sent me the wrong version or what, but there's no Matter pairing code anywhere to be found on the device or the documentation. I wrote to Nanoleaf to see if anything can be done but, odds are, I'm fucked and will have to buy new ones. What's really frustrating is that the Nanoleaf app seems to imply that they are Matter compatible...

Other than that, everything has gone as well as I could have hoped.

Tomorrow I'll wrap this up with a look at the amazing automation tools that Homey Pro offers. Or "flows" as Homey calls them. It's not perfect, but they're so easy and powerful to use that they're darn close. Most everything I ever lamented not being able to do with HomeKit is a piece of cake, and for that alone I'm very happy to have made the leap.

Tonight I finally finished upgrading all my Eve devices to Matter. Despite the time involved, it went about as smoothly as you could hope for.

But then it came time for all the other devices, and it's like I've been walking hip-deep in molassas. Devices are taking multiple, multiple tries to get connected. Though once they are connected they seem to be operating just fine. Hopefully they stay that way.

Since it's now past midnight, I think I'm throwing in the towel for the day. Maybe tomorrow night I'll make some headway on the rest.